HELP! Advice to remove small & badly fitted galley kitchen

Discussion in 'Kitchen Fitters' Talk' started by CMH77, Nov 20, 2019.

  1. CMH77

    CMH77 New Member

    Dear Forum

    Your help please! New to here.

    we inherited a very basic & badly fitted white B&Q kitchen from our wonderful DIY-happy previous owners!

    We don’t have enough £ to have a new fitted kitchen but with a young family I’m becoming more concerned about the safety of the loose cupboard doors, non-reg electrical sockets (not in right distance from cooker), cracked stone floor tiles, missing kick boards & exposed brickwork. It’s usable but we’ve had to remove some cupboard doors as they just wouldn’t stay on any longer.

    I think we need the electrics & kitchen seriously looked at as my husband is concerned that the kitchen is on its own isolated ring main too.

    Please advise how best to go about getting a new but basic kitchen fitted on a budget & if there’s any way of doing this ourselves.

    Many thanks

    Charlie
     
  2. kitfit1

    kitfit1 Screwfix Select

    What is your budget ? And what makes you think you can do a better job of installing it than the "DIY-happy previous owners" ?
     
  3. robertpstubbs

    robertpstubbs Screwfix Select

    I’m sure the cupboard doors could be refitted, even if meant attaching hinges by bolting through cabinet sides.

    Upload some pics of your kitchen.
     
  4. candoabitofmoststuff

    candoabitofmoststuff Screwfix Select

    That's not a problem... it's usually a good thing!

    Regards,
    Cando
     
    furious_customer likes this.
  5. furious_customer

    furious_customer Screwfix Select

    It is normal for the kitchen to be on it's own ring due to the number of appliances in there that consume a lot of power - kettles, hobs, washing machines, tumble dryers etc.
     
  6. TheCatalyst

    TheCatalyst New Member

    We inherited some kind of 80's/90's frankenstein kitchen from the previous owners. We ripped it out (no small task), got an electrician in to redo all the highly questionable wiring, had a plumber get the outlets we needed into better positions, and got a kitchen from Homebase. We fitted it ourselves and are quite happy with the result, although not tiled yet. It is a lot of work though, I think it was about 4 weekends of work plus what I could manage in the evenings.

    Based on my experience I would absolutely avoid getting an integrated fridge, ours had to be literally rammed into position because the tolerances were so tight. Same goes for integrated washing machine, it's another thing to have to perfectly line up and you get a smaller, worse, machine. We actually returned ours and went for freestanding, a lot more washer for your money and a doddle to install. Dishwasher is good to get integrated, just be careful about siting the socket directly behind the machine. With the plug in, ours had about 2mm of clearance so that it was flush with the doors at the front.

    You have to check what is on your invoice from Homebase or whoever plans your kitchen, between the design and the invoice they missed out a drawer unit and gave us extra doors we did not need. Thankfully they sorted that for us without extra charge and refunded us the extra doors, which we just get to keep.

    Also check your walls are straight, it isn't fun finding your wall is curved after you have started fitting units!

    For us a galley kitchen with white goods (except washing machine) and oak worktops was about £5,000. We had the house rewired so I don't remember exactly how much just the kitchen wiring was but with downlights being put in as well as moving/adding sockets this was somewhere between £1k and £2k. Plumbing was about £200 and that involved basically redoing all the outlets to bring them into a logical under the sink position rather than hiding behind utilities.
     

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